The Hollow Men - Politics and Deception

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Karen Tumulty could be, well, a careless, shiftless reporter

Oct 21 at 8:08pm by Anonymous

This is a response to the article “The General Jumps In” by Karen Tumulty published in the September 29, 2003 issue of Time Magazine. The details contained herein are completely fictionalized. I know nothing of Ms. Tumulty’s life or personality. The intention is to satirize what she included in a feature on presidential candidate General Wesley Clark and in turn satirize the current state of mainstream political reporting.

Karen Tumulty

Karen Tumulty was always an achiever. As a girl growing up in Waterbury, Connecticut, she was known to swipe a neighbor’s copy of the New York Times, read it by flashlight in the lawn before the first rays of dawn broke the horizon, then carefully re-roll the newspaper, slide it into its plastic sleeve and replace it on her waking neighbor’s lawn, leaving him none the wiser. She interned as a seventeen year old at the Concord Recorder in New Hampshire, graduated at the top of her class from the Columbia School of Journalism before joining the metro then national bureau of the New York Times. There is no question that Tumulty is cut out to be a top-rated journalist. And it’s no surprise then that Tumulty finds her stories for Time Magazine regularly featured on the cover of the glossy weekly. Her rise has been swift and direct and she exudes the commanding air of a seasoned professional. When she enters her editorial offices; her cubicle is cluttered with a patchwork of loose papers and Post-It Notes on her computer. There are dozens of calls to return. Leads followed up by assistants. Background stories checked. Within minutes of arrival an assistant approaches to say presidential candidate Rep. Richard Gephardt’s people called. He’ll be available for an interview this weekend.

“Gephardt?” Tumulty looks up as dumbfounded by the name. “They must be dreaming.”

“He’s looking good in some polls.” The assistant says, offering an emailed printout.

“Looking good? The man barely has any eyebrows. How good can he look?”

Chastened, the assistant places the page on Tumulty’s desk and walks back to her own.

Tumulty can be forgiven if she doesn’t seem overly interested in Gephardt today. General Wesley Clark, after months of speculation, has finally announced his candidacy for president. The announcement is all the buzz this weekend and Tumulty is due in Little Rock that evening. In a few minutes she will go downstairs to catch the airport limo waiting to take her La Guardia.

Tumulty began making her mark in political journalism in the 1984 New Hampshire primary while working for the Recorder. In fact, it was her work for that small but respected newspaper that got her noticed by editors at the Boston Globe, where she was a political affairs correspondent in 1988.

New Hampshire is also where Tumulty acquired a reputation that has dogged her ever since. As a junior reporter at the Recorder in a primary year she traveled throughout the small state covering dinners, speeches, rallies and town hall meetings. The hours out of the office and behind the wheel added up so when she arrived at the newspaper’s crammed parking lot she wanted to get inside fast — an understandable desirefor anyone who has experienced a bitter New England winter. The newspaper’s prized parking spots, however, were traditionally reserved for senior staff. She got her convenient parking space. But not without stepping on some toes.

Tumulty refuses to discuss the matter, saying only that in that busy period, she “must have been in and out of the parking lot five or six times every day.”

A colleague from that time recalls it as a more pivotal event: “She knew she wasn’t entitled to the closer parking spots. But each time she entered or exited the building, she would stomp into the lobby so everyone noticed her. Finally, when she brought the matter up at a staff meeting, no one appeared more deserving. Basically because she made everyone aware of how often she came and went.”

In terms of parking convenience, it was a brilliant move. But it did mean that the paraplegic subscriptions manager was bumped to a side row. It also left Tumulty’s co-workers marveling at her apparent “ruthless determination.” No junior reporter had ever got a front row parking spot.

The reputation of such single minded cunning seems to have stuck.

“You don’t get as far as Karen without ambition. She’s got ambition all right,” explained an ex-colleague from the Boston Globe, who also didn’t want to be named. “She made it perfectly clear when she came to our newspaper that she was using it as a stepping stone to higher places.”

In spite of Tumulty’s abrasive personality, the journalist is well regarded professionally. She attributes her charisma to a balanced life. Tumulty is just as likely to be caught reading a DKNY catalogue as an Agence France-Press newswire. Fashion and design are lifelong hobbies of Tumulty. Childhood friends recall her that it was often the Fashion & Style section of the New York Times she stole away to read in her neighbor’s front lawn.

But for her interest in glamour, Tumulty surprises again. You could be forgiven for expecting a woman of her distinction to shine with the kind of His Girl Friday-glamour. Tumulty doesn’t seem to shine at all. Her hair is in a perpetual frizz, either from lack of quality grooming time or general disregard.

Physical appearances are not the only are of criticism, either.

“There are always crumbs when I vacuum around her desk,” says a Time-contracted cleaning woman, Pilar, through a translator.

The charges of ambition and carelessness only add weight to the accusations haunting Tumulty. When asked about the reputation she shrugs. “This is a competitive profession. No good reporter is known for their manners.”

Indeed. At a press junket, replete with a White House-provided cheese and wine platter, her fellow journos instinctively crowd the table with guarded backs turned toward Tumulty. “She’s not bashful about taking the last crab stuffed mushroom cap. She’s doesn’t mind an aggressive reach,” said an unnamed colleague.

In person, Tumulty has small, visible hairs at the corners of her lips. At the end of a long day of travel, she gives off a spiced, meaty smell.

At this point, the reader may asking, what the fuck? A spiced, meaty smell? Visible hairs at the corners of her lips? What does this have to do with the news?

Good question. I don’t imagine Karen Tumulty would stand for this depiction of herself, based not on facts but on the cumulative impressions of others filtered through the partisan filter of the journalist. But this isn’t a story of facts. This is the kind of story Tumulty wrote about Wesley Clark on September 29, 2003. It’s a story about appearances and about what “seems.”

In terms of news, it’s absurd. Equally as absurd as the Tumulty’s examination of Wesley Clark in which she confidently and condescendingly lets loose the quip that some people in Washington think Clark is a “little bit, well, odd.”

The exact sentence is, “The mishaps [his position on the war, a verbal flub and a scheduling conflict] did little to quell the private talk in Washington that Clark is a little bit, well, odd.” Private talk? Between who? What kind of fanciful journalism allows a reporter to substitute innuendo for verifiable facts? I indeed doubt that Tumultywould tolerate a news article that dismissed the writing of Time Magazine as nothing more than “extended captions for it color photos.”

But that is a conclusion reached in private talk in Austin, Texas.

Back to the story…

Platters of food are of special interest to Tumulty. Colleagues contend that she positions herself nearest the exit of a press conference, so she can be the first at the buffet table. Asked if this could affect her journalistic skills, she laughs. “How could it? Not unless I get too fat to waddle onto the next red-eye.” Tumulty, possessed with the great self-regard so prevalent in the princely class of today’s journalist, still doesn’t mind an occasional jab at herself.

“There was that one time,” a think tank press aid recalls, “in the feverish days after September 11th. We had a panel on terrorism. She had asked me if she could get the last question. When it came up I couldn’t find her.

he session ended and I walked in to the foyer to find her, hovering over the prosciutto cheese wraps.”

Please note that the think tank is not named, nor is the press aid.

The gossipy tone of the article seeks to create a bond between the reader and the journalist against the pretenses of the politician, who by their opting in to the public life must automatically be trying to pull a fast one on the American people. Wasn’t that the rationale for the kid glove treatment Bush got in 2000? Sure, he was stupid but he didn’t condescend to reporters. And his campaign managers kept the hungry reporters well fed.

The chatty style backfires. It alienates readers, leaving their appetite for substance piqued rather than satisfied. Whether or not Karen Tumulty admits it. Or fellow journalist Mark Thompson admits it (his feature on Clark followed hers), or Time Magazine, Newsweek, or the New York Times Magazine admit it, the American people don’t want gossipy diary entries. They want the facts with a minimum of editorializing. Another quote from the article: “Clark is a smaller man than he appears to be on television…” Smaller to whom? Than the reporter? How tall is she? What does she consider small?

If Tumulty really wanted to convey a sense of Clark’s height, how about trying feet and inches? Or was that system of measurement too common?

We don’t want opinions and prevailing sentiments among the press corp. Because in such a world, reader, you will never have any facts on the subject, whether it is Wesley Clark through the filter of Karen Tumulty, or Karen Tumulty through the filter of yours truly. After all, it’s not like you will ever meet Karen Tumulty.

No, she’s busy flying around the country on assignment. She has “private talk” at lunches and luncheons with colleagues of her profession and class where they reach a chummy verdict on people in the news. You don’t run in the same circles as her, reader. Trust me.

This being the situation, there is no Karen Tumulty for you but the Karen Tumulty I, the journalist, says exists. And I say, although it is unsure at this point, that Karen Tumulty could very well be a careless, shiftless reporter.

Now is that fair?